Dwayne Newton
Aug 28, 2017 · 2 min read

A 9-Year-Old in Pigtails

I saw her walking through the crowd, and I stopped her and said, “You look like a fighter.” She had an air of a woman who seen more than enough bullshit and had no time for those who couldn’t walk the talk and fight for what’s right. She thought that was funny and stopped to talk.

We were at the “Peace, Love & Understanding” rally in San Francisco, a counter-protest to a planned rally for free speech by “Patriot Prayer,” a group of dubious origin and motive that despite their proclamations of no affiliation, attracted white nationalists, Nazis and militia along with violence to their prior events. I had been in conversation with an older man, and the three of us, complete strangers, took our turns to speak, united in our dismay at life under the Trump presidency, a president throwing fistfuls of hate, racism, sexism to sprout and maliciously spread alongside the American path; we had much to say.

A pause, and my baseball-hatted friend asked if she could tell her story of when she was 9-years-old, growing up in Alexandria, Virginia. Her voice became small and broken, and she became that 9-year-old; “I was on a city bus, and I gave up my seat to a older Black person. The bus driver, a large white man, stopped the bus, charged down the aisle, grabbed me by my pigtails and physically threw me off the bus to the ground, drove off and left me there.”

She had told her story straightforward, a story she had clearly told before; even after the passage of 64 years, that assault was yesterday to her. I could see her eyes fighting to contain the tears. I was left speechless, as was the other man. Her words took me alongside her on that Alexandria, VA city bus, 1953, watching from a hard leather seat as this 9-year-old white girl in pigtails violently learns her place in America. And I’m afraid we all have similar stories, each and every last one of us.

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Dwayne Newton

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San Francisco-based photojournalist who likes to get uncomfortably close.